Business Objects Chairman and CEO Bernard Liautaud recently engaged in a far-ranging talk with CRN West Coast Bureau Chief Rochelle Garner on the state of the business intelligence market, the company's reasons for acquiring Crystal Decisions and the role of the channel. This is an excerpt of that conversation.

This week in Las Vegas, Veritas has attracted some 3,400 attendees to its annual user and partner conference. The message this week: We've got the independent, hardware-neutral solution that paves the way for organizations to adopt utility computing. But there's some question as to how many companies can really embrace this model. CEO Gary Bloom addresses this and other issues head-on in an interview with VARBusiness senior executive editor T.C. Doyle, which has been edited for length and clarity below.

Windows XP, WinServer and Visual Studio 2003 support announced for Extended

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates predicted that 64-bit computing will become mainstream in the PC industry over the next two years because of 32-bit extended technology that preserves customers' existing investments.

Coming soon: advanced connectivity, wireless, migration tools

Microsoft has recommitted to releasing Longhorn, its next-generation Windows client and server, into beta testing in 2005 even though its chairman acknowledged that security concerns threaten his dream of enabling seamless connectivity and Web services.

WebSphere Studio, Rational updates to be released simultaneously

IBM this week plans to unveil simultaneous updates to its WebSphere Studio toolset and the IBM Rational Suite of developer tools,a move in line with IBM's strategy to merge its myriad developer offerings into a unified platform.

CRM solution providers that want a piece of the attention focused on Salesforce.com but are worried about building a business on onetime referral fees now have a new hosted CRM service to consider. Officially launching its U.S. operations on Tuesday, Malaysia-based Entellium will sell its software-as-service only through the channel.

This is the Big Issue dedicated to the Big Ones. This year's VARBusiness 500 coverage dissects the industry's largest solution providers in a number of exciting ways. We also have the richest data set VARBusiness has ever collected on these organizations.

Ken Cron, interim CEO of Computer Associates International, said this week in an open letter to channel partners that the internal audit just completed by CA's board of directors did in fact reveal wrongdoing in regard to the company's previous accounting practices.